Tag: apples

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Kitchen Garden

Garden Gangbusters

Food pantry donation on July 18, 2025.

In July, we are in the thick of harvest season. There has been adequate rain, and growing conditions are almost ideal. 2025 will be one of my best gardening years ever. Among the benefits of a productive garden is frequent donations to area food pantries.

Zestar! apples July 21, 2025

One measure of abundance is Zestar! apples. It was the first large harvest from a tree I planted a few years ago. The taste is sensational: juicy and tart. They will make great applesauce. This year I decided to can applesauce in pint jars instead of quarts. One main use is as a binding agent in my Iowa vegan cornbread and the pint is more likely to be used up before it goes bad.

Use of apples goes way back on my father’s side of the family. Stories survive of family working in the apple canning plant in Appalachia in the early 20th Century. I am happy to have four varieties of apples growing in our back yard. Calling it my heritage is not wrong. I don’t spray, so they are not perfect. Boy howdy! Do I use them up!

Harvest on July 21, 2025.

When the garden is going gangbusters, the challenge is to use up or preserve as much as possible, as soon as possible. Two of the crates in the photo above have celery in them. Celery gets processed into four different things: I keep “hearts” of celery for cooking fresh, ending up with ten of them this year. The various outer stalks are separated from the leaves. The stalks with some size to them are chopped into small bits and frozen to add to soup. All the very small pieces of stalk and stem are roughly cut, bagged and frozen for use in making vegetable broth. Finally, the leaves are rough chopped, bagged and frozen to add to soup. I use the whole plant. All of this takes a bit of work, yet the flavor makes it worth the effort.

Another big project ahead is using garlic scapes before the garlic harvest. I have a good crop of basil, so I expect I will make garlic scape pesto. I already have plenty of half pint jars of pesto in the freezer, so I don’t need many more. Will see how far along with that I get.

Growing a large garden ties a person to home. There is so much to do in July, if we don’t pace ourselves, we may be tuckered out for the August tomato season. Can’t let that happen.

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Kitchen Garden

Summer Consumables

Photo by Mateusz Dach on Pexels.com

2025 is turning into an alcohol-free year. I didn’t even purchase my normal case of bottled beer for the summer. Some days, I don’t know who I am.

I drove across the lakes to the North Liberty Community Food Pantry and donated the day’s harvest of yellow squash and cucumbers. It was the third food bank donation this week. I like having an outlet when I grow too much of something. It enables me to pick the best produce for the kitchen yet find a home for all of it. Patrons of the food pantry truly need what donors provide.

On the way home I stopped at the convenience store to gamble $2 on the lottery. I noticed the display of many types of shots of liquor between the two cash registers and asked, 

"Do you sell a lot of these?"
"We do," replied the cashier.
"I imagine you sell a lot on Friday nights," I said. "Actually, mornings are the biggest sales. You'd be surprised how many people need a shot to start their work day."

I went to the orchard where I worked eight seasons and bought Michigan cherries. A family member grows them and they are some of the best I have ever tasted. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Also yes. It is a summer tradition worth continuing as long as I can afford it. In the sales display with the cherries they had bags of Lodi apples. This signifies the apple harvest has begun its long season continuing into late October.

The first crop of Zestar! apples will soon ripen in my garden. I picked one today and while the sugars are beginning to form, they are not yet ripe. It won’t be long, though, maybe a week or two.

The work of planting is mostly finished. From here, the work changes to weeding, harvesting, cooking, and leveraging other growers for what I don’t produce myself. It is all part of the circle of life when you grow food. I feel a part of something bigger than myself on days like this.

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Sustainability

Apples in Full Bloom

Crimson Crisp apple tree, April 25, 2025.

This year should be a good year for apples and pears. Every tree has a lot of blooms, including the two newly planted “replacement” trees. Some days it’s good to just view this fleeting event during which we pray for frost to hold off, pollination to occur, and a bountiful crop.

Red Delicious and Earliblaze apple trees
Red Delicious
Close up Red Delicious blooms
More Red Delicious
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Kitchen Garden

Apples Are Wrinkled

Gold Rush apples at Wilson’s Orchard and Farm Oct. 22, 2022.

During the eight years I worked with Paul Rasch at Wilson’s Orchard I learned a lot about apples. I was offered a chance to return after the coronavirus pandemic, yet I declined. Things had changed too much as they diversified their offerings. They moved from being mostly a seasonal apple orchard to being more of a year-around event destination with multiple big crops available for u-pick, musical entertainment, special dinners, and of course the rebuilt barn that could host a wedding or other special event. It would be difficult to recapture how I felt about my tenure in the earlier years by taking the job. I’m okay with everything.

When my apple trees fruit, I don’t hardly go to the orchard. I can get all the apples I need for a year from the five remaining trees. At the end of each season, regardless of whether I have apples, I buy Gold Rush apples from the orchard because they keep really well in the refrigerator. On Feb. 14, I’m still eating last season’s apples, even though they are getting wrinkled. They seem sweeter now than they did when they were just-picked.

When I have apples, I replenish my stores of applesauce, apple butter, apple cider vinegar, and dried apples. In the beginning, I would process every good apple I grew. A person only needs so much of processed goods. Today I make what I need to replenish the shelves and leave the rest for wildlife to eat fresh and over the winter. Invariably, every apple I leave in a backyard pile is gone by spring.

I’ve gotten to Henry David Thoreau’s view of apples:

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of August; but I think that none of them are so good to eat as some to smell. One is worth more to scent your handkerchief with than any perfume they sell in the shops. The fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, along with that of flowers. Some gnarly apple which I pick up in the road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of Pomona, carrying me forward to those days when they will be collected in golden and ruddy heaps in the orchards and about the cider-mills.

Thoreau captures something I can’t. I think about this quote every time I take a wrinkled Gold Rush apple from the refrigerator drawer and inhale its perfume.

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Kitchen Garden

Apple Cider Vinegar Day

Ten half-gallon jars of apple cider vinegar fermenting.

There was an opportunity to fill the apple cider vinegar containers so I took it. With an abundant apple harvest there are plenty to juice and turn into vinegar. I’ve written about vinegar-making multiple times in the last ten years. All I have to add is this is one of the best apple seasons since I planted the first trees in 1994.

The apple juice produced by these Red Delicious apples is quite good, even better once the impurities are filtered out. I have a couple of five gallon buckets of juice apples ready to convert and store in large glass jars. It tastes better than anything I buy at the store. Key to good taste is drinking it fresh rather than canning it.

Vinegar-making is the end of the garden harvest season. I’ll glean the garden a couple more times and pick more apples should I need them. The main work is done.

Last year I planted garlic on Oct. 15 and expect about the same this year. A neighbor with a pickup truck already took me to a local farm where I bought four straw bales for mulching. They are resting in the garage and ready to go once the cloves are in the ground.

This is a punk autumn because everyone but me is away and sick. On Monday I went to a pharmacy that had the just-released COVID vaccine and got inoculation number seven. I am determined to avoid getting COVID. This means avoiding most human contact of a duration over ten minutes. With our child living on their own and my spouse at her sister’s home for an extended stay, the chance of contracting the virus at home from one of them is close to nil. I restrict movement as best I can and wear a KN-95 mask when with groups of people. For good measure, I also got the seasonal influenza vaccination last week.

With vinegar fermenting on the shelf, I am at the point of apple season where I need a big project to use the harvest before it goes bad. In the meanwhile, if I want a snack, it will contain apples. Breakfast? Apples. Lunch? Apples. Supper? Baked apple dessert. We look forward to this time of year so I plan to enjoy it.

Categories
Kitchen Garden Writing

Apple Rush

Apple time 2023. Red Delicious.

My focus in the garden turned to apples. By weight, it is the biggest crop I grow. Doing something useful with them drives me to spend much kitchen time processing them. Zestar! and Earliblaze are finished with Red Delicious remaining to close out the garden season.

Of the four varieties I grow, Red Delicious hang the longest on the tree. When they produce, there are many, many of of them. Our needs for juice, applesauce, apple butter, dried apples, and fresh eating are modest compared to the quantity on the tree. I’m already looking for placement of most of them in a Community Supported Agriculture project.

Tomatoes are finishing and it has been a good season. Because of spring trouble getting seedlings to take, there weren’t as many, or as many different varieties, as I had hoped. The difference this year compared to last is that we used most garden tomatoes in our kitchen instead of giving them away. Tomatoes are a brief delight of summer. Once ours are gone, I expect to buy very few tomatoes at the grocer.

I took down the portable greenhouse and noticed a problem with the zipper at the access point. I don’t know if it will be usable next year but I folded it up and put away the frame. Replacing it will be a spring decision, although I likely will. The portable greenhouses are good for a couple of seasons.

I need to figure out fall garden plot preparation. Where will the burn pile be? Where will the garlic go next month? Where will tomatoes go next year?

The burn pile is important because I move it around to deposit minerals throughout the garden. Because we are in a drought I won’t actually burn anything until rain comes. There needs to be plenty of space to pile it high while we wait.

I plan to plant 100 garlic seeds and it will likely be in the plot where the garden composter currently lives. The pallets used to make the composter are getting old and deteriorated. I will likely move the composter to the west side of the garden. I hang my Practical Farmers of Iowa sign on it, so on that side, it may be more visible from the street.

Finally, there are tomatoes, likely the most important crop I grow. This year, deer were able to jump the fence and eat many small tomato plants. Next year I plan to return to a crowding method of tomato planting. By giving deer no place to land inside the fence, they can’t jump in, and the plants grow better. The issue is it crowds me as well. I liked having four-foot rows between the tomatoes this year. It made it easier for me to get among the plants to weed and harvest. It made it easier for the deer as well. I may have enough fencing to install eight-foot tall chicken wire around them next year. This may be the compromise I choose to keep four foot rows. Which plot will tomatoes go? I’m not sure yet, although I favor following the garlic.

As home life turns to apple processing, I enjoy the sense of closure it brings. In years when there are few apples, gardening doesn’t seem the same. In the coming days I’ll embrace the apple rush. Who knows how many more there will be?

Categories
Kitchen Garden

End of the Earliblaze Apples

Bowl of Earliblaze apples

I finished what I’m doing with Earliblaze apples this year. The trees produced so much fruit I could not keep up. There will be plenty for wildlife to eat well into winter.

Besides eating them fresh, I made apple cider vinegar and applesauce for storage. I have a backlog of apple butter and dried apples, so none of that this year.

There is a brief break in apple processing while I wait for Red Delicious to ripen, maybe a week or two. After they do ripen, it will be a mad rush to the end.

When I planted six trees at home I didn’t know much about growing apples. I knew I wanted apple trees, in part because of family stories of my Virginia ancestors. I picked varieties that would space out the harvest. That’s about it. There were four varieties planted in 1994 and two remain. My learning about growing apples came mostly from working for seven seasons as a mapper (person who directs guests) at Wilson’s Orchard beginning in 2013. It was an unexpected job, but one for which I am thankful.

Paul Rasch and Sara Goering bought Wilson’s Orchard in 2009. Chug Wilson had planted more than 100 varieties of apples before he sold to them. During my tenure I learned about many of them. I would come in well before my shift and wander through the part of the orchard where trees were planted to test how they did.

What I value most about working there is countless conversations I had with Paul about apple culture. If I had a question, he had an answer. I would bring in photos of my home orchard for his advice. We talked about everything apples. Learning with an experienced apple grower was a perquisite of the job. It was great!

Years like this one I’m on my own for apples. My trees produced so many I don’t need outside apples. What I’m saying is I’m now an irregular customer of Paul and Sara’s orchard. I buy a couple of half-gallons of sweet cider in season, and if they have Gold Rush apples, I’ll get some for storage. For now, I have all the Earliblaze apples we can eat.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Diary of Late Summer Kitchen Work

Apple beverage.

This is one tart, tasty apple drink. I’m not sure what to call it.

When I make applesauce, I steam cored apples in enough water to cover the bottom of a pan. Additional moisture is released from the apples. Everything goes into a cone sieve strainer resting on a large Rubbermaid pitcher. Once the liquid filters out I move the strainer to a second identical pitcher and separate the applesauce from the peels. The liquid goes into jars which are stored in the refrigerator until used. I made about a gallon of it already.

Every kitchen has the potential for unique culinary items like this. With the thousands of cookbooks out there, someone is likely to have described this apple beverage previously. It is one more way to use produce in a kitchen garden.

Tomato peeling for canning whole.

I grow enough tomatoes to sort them by size and type. Medium-sized ones are to be canned whole and the process is much like what exists in other kitchens. I core them and put a small X in the bottom. Dip them in boiling water for a minute or two and then cool them in an ice water bath before peeling. Next, I cram them into a quart jar leaving about an inch of head space. Once filled, they go into a water bath canner for 40 minutes. This is a simple, reliable technique.

Some people add salt or a teaspoon of vinegar to the tomatoes before canning. I rarely have an issue with spoilage, so I leave it out. I can’t recall how many quart jars of whole tomatoes I put up in 2022 yet I have a half dozen left.

I make tomato sauce. Most of the crop of Amish Paste and San Marzano goes into sauce. Similar to making applesauce, I steam cook the tomatoes until the flesh gives with a spoon without adding any liquid to the pan. Into the cone sieve strainer the whole thing goes where they sit while the juice drains off. The juice is canned until I have enough quart jars to last at least a year. It is mostly for soup making. In the second pitcher, I separate the skins and seeds leaving a rich, thick tomato sauce. This goes into pint-sized jars. It’s enough to make a batch of pasta sauce for two people. The organic tomato sauce I buy at the wholesale club costs about $0.75 per 15-ounce can. It is good, yet I like using my own first. I’m at the point of summer when I’m running out of new canning lids. When I went to the home, farm and auto supply store to get more last week, they were out as well.

The dehydrator is running with Red Rocket variety hot chili peppers. When these dry, I’ll crush them and use for red pepper flakes, replacing the ones from last year. Since my spouse doesn’t like hot stuff, a little goes a long way.

I picked a half dozen Red Delicious apples and while crunchy and sweet, they are not at peak sweetness. I’ll wait a while before harvesting for the kitchen. Apples and pears have been so abundant this year, most of the crop will feed wild animals though the winter. I need about three more quarts of applesauce. Then I’ll pick the best to eat raw for refrigerator storage and juice the rest until all the half gallon jars are fermenting vinegar. It has been a great apple year.

A couple of bananas were getting overly ripe. I made banana bread for the first time since I can’t remember. I used the King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion cookbook for the recipe. It came out quite good. The challenge for banana bread in our household is to reduce oil and take out the eggs and milk products. The egg replacements I used previously haven’t really worked. I use applesauce instead of eggs to make cornbread. Maybe I’ll try that next time. Once I try a recipe that works, and this one did, I then start to tweak it to make it low oil and vegan. Eggs are so much a part of American cooking it is difficult to give them up. We do like banana bread.

For supper I made a pizza with home made dough, my tomato sauce, and toppings of sliced onions, jalapeno peppers and tomatoes from the garden. Cheese was mozzarella and a sprinkle of Parmesan. There will be leftovers.

So that’s what went on in our kitchen today. Despite outdoors temperatures around 90 degrees all afternoon, I made the best of it inside. It felt like a productive day.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

First Crop of Zestar!

Zestar! apples.

The decent rain this morning will help the apples. I’m particularly looking forward to having a Zestar! apple from the tree I planted a couple of years ago. Zestar! is early and a bit tart. I tried one already and there is still too much starchiness. This rain should help them get bigger and sweeten them.

It is different for a retiree when it rains. Outdoors activity slows or stops. We take up indoors tasks that may have been long neglected. Or maybe, I put up the garage door and just watch the rain fall.

There is a lot going on in Iowa right now. Before I deal with that, I just need to breathe a while.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Apples in Early June

Apples in early June.

They say if you bring something good to a potluck you’ll have to bring the same dish to every potluck from now on. I don’t make the rules.

When I attend a potluck, with or without my spouse, I take something we can both eat. Sometimes it is popular, yet mostly it is not. I overestimated the degree to which other people’s like for kale would match mine. I no longer take kale dishes. Whatever is not eaten goes into our rotation of leftovers. Live and let live. Life is good.

When the garden comes in, I make something for potluck with fresh ingredients, maybe potato salad. It is important to keep anything with eggs in it chilled. During apple harvest, some sort of baked apple dish is the norm, something like apple crisp. Thus far, my dishes haven’t been described as good very often, so I’m free to experiment. And I will.

In mid-June we have a good idea if there will be an apple crop and how big it may be. This year’s apples look to be plentiful. Typically, earliest apples go to sauce for fresh eating, and apple cider vinegar. Depending upon how they taste, I may make some apple butter with early apples. Mostly I wait until the September-October harvested ones for the main batches of canned sauce and butter. I also fill up the cider vinegar jars in the pantry. Each year I learn a bit more about processing the abundance when there is one.

The two newest apple trees are unpredictable. One has a couple of fruits forming, and the other has a lot. I can’t remember which is Zestar! and which is Crimson Crisp. Either would be welcome this year.

I toured the garden this morning and besides weeding, things look alright. There was not much caterpillar damage on the cruciferous vegetables. In the front yard, I saw a Monarch caterpillar and a milkweed bug having breakfast together. Late spring is a great time of year.